I spent this
past weekend wearing out the soles of my newly-purchased shoes walking up and down
the length of Yonge Street in Toronto and padding around the Toronto Reference
Library just north of Bloor. The library has been playing host to the Toronto
Comic Arts Festival since 2009, also the first year I attended. I’ve gone every
May since then, adding more and more people to my little comic adoring posse
and meeting several print and web artists I’m a big fan of, including comics
theorist Scott McCloud, Ultimate
Spider-Man penciller Stuart Immonen, Queen of the Webcomics Kate Beaton and
my latest favourite writer, Jeff Lemire.
Pictured L-R: Myself, Chris Mantil, Sam, Anjuli
So after
spending a couple hours in a downtown diner, we walked over to the library and
got our comics appreciation weekend underway.
However
popular she’s become, though, her affable personality has not been dampened,
and she was glad to chat with each of her fans as she signed and sketched in their books. For about three minutes, she and I talked about research, Men’s Rights
Advocates and her next comic, all while she was drawing me a funny picture of
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, based on one of my favourite comics of hers
(second from the top). If you aren’t familiar with Kate Beaton’s work, please,
check it out. She lightheartedly pokes fun at history and literature, and with
a distinctly Canadian edge. A national damn treasure, she is.
I’ve
sung Jeff Lemire’s praises in another entry. Animal Man, which he writes, is the single best ongoing series on
comic store shelves at the moment and at nine issues its quality doesn’t seem
to be waning. In perhaps the nerdiest mission I’ve ever undertaken, I brought
my copy of Animal Man #1 to TCAF and,
after a short wait, I was able to get Lemire to sign it. I never wanted to be
one of those guys who bags and boards their single comics issues, but for the
time being this is as close as I get to possessing anything resembling an
heirloom.
But
before he brought Buddy Baker back into the spotlight (and before he introduced
us to the twisted world of Gus and Jeppard in Sweet Tooth), Lemire wrote and drew Essex County, a three part multigenerational family saga set in the
southern Ontario community of the same name where he grew up. I was able to get
my hands on an autographed hardcover copy after he left and read it on the bus
ride back to Ottawa—read in spurts, for it’s a sad, strange, heavy story,
punctuated by transgressions, missed opportunities and, at long last, a seed of
hope for the characters’ futures. The volume was a finalist for CBC’s Canada
Reads contest in 2011, and while it didn’t nab the top prize it’s indisputably
one of the great works of Canadian fiction.
For
the third year in the row I popped over to Danielle Corsetto’s booth. Corsetto
writes and draws Girls with Slingshots,
a charming relationship webcomic that features a talking Irish cactus and a
ghost kitty. Yeah. There’s an inherent absurdity in purchasing a print
collection of a comic whose archives I can access for free at any time, but I
like contributing to a good creator. Not to mention, I’m obsessed with amassing
a multimedia library. Volume Six is the third book of Corsetto’s I’ve bought,
and the first to be printed in colour, and let me tell you it looks gorgeous.
Anthony
Clark, better known to his Internet audience by the curious pseudonym of
Nedroid, is the eccentric mind behind Nedroid Picture Diary, which depicts the cute, witty and occasionally subversive
adventures of the cocky bird Reginald and his compact ursine counterpart, the
aptly named Beartato. Clark is a member of Cracked.com’s Pointless Waste of
Time Forums, which I frequent, and regularly converses in drawings, such as
this amazing Monocle-Off. I only asked him for a sketch last year, so this year
I bought his second book, Beartato and
the Incredible Event, and asked him to draw Beartato and the shark-headed
Harrison high-fiving. Clark went the extra mile and fully fleshed out the group
dynamic.
*dances in joy*
Perhaps
the strangest item in my haul, Tale of
Sand is an abstract, darkly comedic graphic novel based on an unproduced
screenplay by Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl, adapted for the comics medium by southern
Ontario-born and Toronto-based artist Ramón K. Pérez. The screenplay was born
out of Henson’s brief career in experimental filmmaking in the years before he
created the Muppets, and was loosely based on his Academy Award-nominated short
film Time Piece. It’s also undeniable
proof that the father of Kermit, Big Bird and David Bowie’s codpiece dropped
acid at some point in the ’60s.
Ramón K. Pérez
It’s
totally unlike anything Henson was famous for, largely devoid of dialogue and
even traditional narrative, following gruff loner Mac as he’s chased across the
American southwest by an eye patch-wearing rogue. I figure it’ll take a few
more perusals before I can even start to understand Tale of Sand, but regardless Pérez’s art is absolutely stunning,
incorporating a variety of palettes and even actual pages from Henson and
Juhl’s script. The physical volume itself is also wonderfully designed. If
you’re in the mood for something a little more surreal, check it out. It’ll
give you an interesting glimpse into the mind of a man who brought joy to a lot
of people’s childhoods.
Other highlights
from the mini-con included a panel on cartoons and music featuring electronic
musician and occasional comics artist Eric “Kid Koala” San, Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley
and German artist Arne Bellstorf, the last of whom debuted his semi-biographical
comic about the Beatles in their early days, Baby’s in Black, at TCAF this year. O’Malley also signed my copy of
Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour after the
panel was over. So wooooooooooo.
As well, I
briefly chatted with Cameron Stewart, a Canadian comic book penciller who has
contributed to several Grant Morrison-penned works, including Seven Soldiers of Victory, Batman and Robin and Batman Incorporated. To be perfectly
honest, I was almost in awe of talking to an actual Batman artist. Definite geek out moment.
So yeah, an
awesome weekend to be certain. I got to meet and chat with artists whose work I
loved, added some interesting volumes to my comics collection, and hung out
with good friends. All in all, I couldn’t ask for a better weekend.
L-R: Myself, Chris, Sam, Alex, disdainful strangers
And then Chris
got attacked by a pigeon.
Author's Rendition
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